Walking in Juarez

Walking in Juarez

Yesterday Joe Hayes and I went over to Juárez
to walk around and to have dinner.
It’s been a long-time ritual for us
when he comes visiting from Santa Fe.

We crossed the Stanton Street Bridge.
We were happy to be going to Juárez again.
A quiet rain had begun to fall
as soon as we topped the bridge.
It came and went, sometime heavily, during our walk.
It’s a month too early for the monsoons to begin
saturating this part of the Chihuahua Desert,
so the rain felt delicious and comforting.
The desert, even in its cities,
has a beautiful smell when it rains.
It’s the smell of wet greasewood and sage bushes.
Such dreamy cool weather for the end of May
when in most years the thermometer is already
climbing over 100. Now wonder Joe and I enjoyed
walking in the rain and dancing among the puddles
in the greasy streets. It was a great unexpected pleasure.

Just on the other side of the bridge
we saw a covey of the Mexican army,
seven men dressed in desert brown helmets and fatigues,
packing automatic rifles and pistols.
I wanted to take a photo but I didn’t dare.
These seven unsmiling soldiers were dressed up
to play Mexican Army but they didn’t inspire
any confidence.
Mostly 18 and 19 years old kids,
they were loitering out of the rain under a big tree
like malingering taxi drivers.
Except these guys were carrying big guns.

We walked south down Avenida Lerdo—or as we call it,
la Avendia de las Novias—where dress shops populate
both sides of the street.
The shops specialize in quinceañas and weddings,
and the big windows are decorated with manikin dreams.
The shops were empty of customers.
Their incomes depend on the Mexican-Americans
coming across and spending money.
Nobody was crossing anymore.
As far as they were concerned,
nobody was getting married,
nobody was celebrating a young girl’s 15th birthday.
Maybe their world was drying up like an empty seed pod.
The clerks peered at us through the drizzle,
wondering where the two old gringos were going.

We walked down to Avenida Septiembre de la Diez y Seis
and then west to the plaza and the cathedral
and the mercados. At least people were wandering
in the streets there. Except it didn’t feel like the border.
The rain had changed the ambience.
That and the absence of gringos and Mexican-Americans,
folks with money in their pockets,
folks to do business with.
It could have been Veracruz or Hermosillo.
Any place else further south.
But the Mexicans were there at least.
Juárez, like New York City, is a street city.
It's vitality is out on the streets to watch and feet.
A little band of of cristianos were singing corridos
to Jesus in the gazebo of the plaza,
women and children and men scurried back and forth,
buying food for dinner, trying to make a peso somehow,
laughing and screaming and chatting and singing.
Music blared from loudspeakers.
Behind the new mercados is Calle de Paz,
a street of unbridaled laissez-faire capitalism.
A few years ago Calle de Paz was packed
with illegal vendors selling everything from song birds
to rattlesnake rattles and herbs to ripped off DVDs
(you can buy first run movies for $5)
and any kind of dope if you knew who to ask,
but after the city built the two new mercados
the police ran all the street vendors away at gunpoint.
One man, a leader of protesting vendors, was killed.
Now, with the recession debilitating
the street economies of Juárez,
the puestos (stands) are creeping back into the streets.
And of course the sad whores are still there.
Calle de Paz is the last territory of the old whores,
women in their 30s and 40s, fat and worn out,
long past the hungry dreams of their late teens and 20s.
They stood in the doorways of cheap bars,
their eyes empty and lonely, watching the rain come down.

We went to the Villa del Mar for dinner.
It’s long been one of my favorites
but it’s been a year or so since I was there.
A few of the tables had patrons, so that made us happy.
At least it was still open.
We sat at a booth and a young mesero brought us
fresh made chips and two salsas and a bunch of limes.
Joe doesn’t drink anymore, I don’t drink much,
so we both had agua minerals con limon.
I had the Sopa Marinera Grande
and Joe had the filete de pescado mojo de ajo.
It was very good.
We watched the rain fall outside
and we talked about all the many times
we have crossed back and forth.
When the rain slacked up some, we asked for the bill.
It was $12.76 (1560 pesos).
A little more that 8 pesos for a dollar.
Like it was when we were kids.
But now I’m 67 and Joe will be 64. Joe laughed.
It was his time to pay, but how can it be so cheap?
He gave the waiter $20 in ones,
the young man smiled a very large smile
and we walked back home to the other side.

Bobby Byrd May 2009

Line breaks by Glenn Buttkus.
Prose posted over on Bobby Byrd's Blog